i'm a winner!?

we got home yesterday around 11:30 from 2 weeks away. 

as we drove up, we saw our mailbox over-flowing, no surprise there. then we spotted multiple boxes/packages on the stoop. little bit strange, but okay. and then we saw a nasty black glove on the bushes. justin's exact words were "it looks like our town house was just asking to be broken in to" but praise the Lord we weren't!

as i opened the mail and packages, i found some stuff i didn't order or expect. it was some stuff from visine and a piece of paper said "Congratulations on your Lucky break!" I sometimes enter the giveaways from Lucky magazine after I read it. Turns out I won a giveaway! So what the total was probably under 10 dollars...sometimes its the small things!

so excuse me as i go enter more giveaways since i am on a roll. ha

thanksgiving

thanksgiving break always takes a lot out of me. lots of eating and shopping, my life is tough.

we were blessed to spend thanksgiving with my momma and daddy. mom is a fantastic cook and thanksgiving is always great with my parents, even though it was just the 4 of us at lunch.

14 pounds of pure goodness. 

after lunch, i looked at every single black friday ad. it's a tradition. i have always loved weekly ads, i'm pretty sure that is a little bit strange...but i'm okay with that.

we spent a significant amount of time taking family pictures for our christmas card. this isn't the one going out, but too cute of millie not to share. plus, i didn't want the only picture of the post to be a turkey :)

my brother and sister-in-law came over for dinner and we stuffed our faces again. so good to see them. 

i am so blessed to have such a loving husband and family. we had a fantastic thanksgiving break...but it sure is nice to be back home.

pre-thanksgiving trip to virginia

we spent the past couple of days visiting with justin's family in richmond, virginia. we hadn't been there in a minute, so it was really good to spend time with them!

we made the drive up on saturday, which was quite beautiful...although it took us over 8 hours from georgia. i don't remember the fall leaves looking as pretty as they have this season. i like it.

after church on sunday, we walked over to lexi's elementary school and played with millie and on the playground. (justin put millie in my lap and i fell off the swing. i have bruises to prove)
lexi and i collected leaves to make her mom a centerpiece for the table.

we played lots of cards and watched the dogs play. look at the earlier posts about shopping with lexi and millie's retrieving skills for more specific stories about our trip. all in all, we had a really great visit!

on our way back to georgia from richmond, we spent the night in north carolina with justin's aunt. his aunt and uncle live on multiple acres and have 4 dogs, 3 goats, 3 pigs and 2 cats. pretty much animal paradise. millie loved playing with the other dogs. but was scared of the goats and cats...imagine that! we had a great time visiting with aunt tracy as well!!

happy thanksgiving ya'll!!

millie's skills.

during our visit, we were hanging out on the back porch at justin's mom's house. it was such a pretty day, we spent the afternoon sitting out there reading and playing with the dogs.

at one point i leaned over the deck to take a picture of millie running with a HUGE stick and dropped my sunglasses. millie immediately ran to my glasses, picked them up and brought them over to me. how precious? i love our dog.

short-lived surprises

i am posting this short one from virginia. we have had a great time visiting with justin's mom, step-dad and little sister. i promise i will have a long post with lots of pics soon.

the whole family went to target before dinner last night and lexi (justin's 8 year old sis) and i shopped for her christmas presents for her mom and dad. we ran and hid around the store as we picked out the best presents, plus spent lots of time making sure she had enough money. the selection process took around 25 minutes.

lexi was so proud of the surprises she bought her parents.
so proud that she felt the need to tell them everything we got them...before we could even make it to the car.

so much for the Christmas morning surprise.
oh kids. oh well, it was fun and they will like what we picked out.

adventures under the deck.

background for this post: we got to my parent's house on monday afternoon. it had been raining pretty much non-stop for 24 hours. wilma, my childhood dog, is 14 and spends most of her time under the deck.

Under 5 minutes from when we got to my parent's house, Millie decided to find shelter from the rain/wet grass by going under the deck with Wilma. When we finally saw her again, she was covered head to toe in good ole Georgia mud. I wish I snapped a picture of that...she was ecstatic, I was disgusted.

Our solution was to tie her to my parent's fence and hose her down. She did NOT enjoy that at all.

(note: that bandana was white before the incident. crisp, clean white.)

She spent the majority of the time chugging water as we attempted to get her clean.


After her mud bath, her coat was so soft and shiny. Now I know why people spend oodles of money on those treatments at a spa.

road trip.

we are leaving bright and early tomorrow morning to begin our massive trip for fall conference and thanksgiving.

our trip includes
1. conference in orlando, fl for southeast region staff of crusade. flying--praise the Lord.
2. road trip to richmond, va to visit with justin's family.
3. stopping by pittsboro, nc to spend the night with justin's aunt and uncle. this will be millie's fav part of the trip...tons of land and other animals to play with.
4. back to atl for thanksgiving with my family. plus lots of baking, hanging with justin's dad and of course shopping.

please pray for our travels and safety. and sanity while traveling with a puppy.

thanks for your patience in reading my boring updated :)

tuscaloosa trees

the best part of our neighborhood is that since it is an older area, we have beautiful trees near us. i took a couple pics on a walk with millie. their fall colors are so vibrant. love it.

that little guy was just too strange to pass up.

hope you enjoy our neighborhood :)

amanda + joseph.

on sunday, i drove to athens for a wedding shower for my college friend amanda and her soon-to-be hubby joseph. they are such a cute couple and i know they are so excited to be married!!

my friends courtney and kristin threw the shower and it was so much fun catching up with friends. i haven't seen some of them since we graduated, i know im a bad friend. everyone is doing different things and i am so glad i got to spend sweet time seeing everyone.

pretty pretty friends.

i'm back.

sorry for being away for the past week. we had a great week.

we drove to louisville, ky to visit a seminary. (don't worry, we aren't leaving alabama)

i went to atlanta to visit my parents.

then on to athens for a shower to celebrate amanda and joseph's upcoming wedding and see lots of friends.

so fun. but im too rushed to post it all now.

GLUTEN-FREE peanut butter cookies

It was our co-worker Allison's birthday this weekend! She has recently discovered needs to eliminate gluten from her diet for health reasons...and to be honest I am fairly clueless on what that actually means :) But I searched the good ole internet to find a recipe for birthday cookies! I found a recipe for peanut butter cookies. And they were pretty good if I say so myself. 

The original recipe was found on All Recipes, I doubled the recipe and added chocolate chips. Please don't correct me or inform Allison if chocolate has gluten. 

I'm not sure why the picture quality isn't great...ignore that ;)

Yes, this is seriously all that was in the cookies.

2 cups sugar.

2 cups peanut butter (which was almost the entire container).

2 eggs.

1/2 cup chocolate chips.

Mix the ingredients. Then drop on cookie sheet (I usually line mine with parchment paper so they don't brown). I flattened them with a fork...to make them cute.

Bake for 8-9 minutes. This recipe made us about 3 dozen cookies!

Happy Birthday Allison!!!